Reading 1

In “Discourse and Decoration: The Struggle for Historical Space,” Paul Greenhalgh discusses how there is the inappropriate need for art and the artist to be categorized by art historians. Artist are forced to decide if they are craftsmen or fine artists. Paul Greenhalgh specifically speaks on behalf of ceramics. He discusses that ceramics have their own identity that lies in the history of the medium and that historians need to evaluate the identity of the medium and it's place in contemporary culture. 

When Paul Greenhalgh was talking about avant-garde art, I couldn’t help thinking about the artist Kiki Smith and how her sculptures talk about the human form being both repulsive but also intriguing. When Paul Greenhalgh said that avant-garde doesn’t simply mean “experimental, original, or innovative” but with the rise of modernism, it got me thinking about the sculptures and drawings of the past that could have shaped Kiki Smith’s work (p. 164). Paul Greenhalgh doesn’t seem to say that ceramics don’t belong to certain movements but that the artists are shaped and molded by the works before them and that ceramics is about exploring the past.